1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to evaporation of waste fluids and, more particularly, to the evaporation of waste fluids at remote locations involving fracing of oil and/or gas wells.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Throughout the United States, the most common way of getting rid of liquid waste is to inject the liquid waste into a disposal well. Waste water disposal wells are becoming quite common, especially in regions where there is drilling for oil and gas. If hydraulic fracing is used, millions of gallons of water or other fluids will be used in the fracing process to break up the rock and retrieve the oil and gas. The fluid used in the fracing process will come back up along with additional ground water.
Most of this waste water is trucked to disposal wells and injected thousands of feet underground for permanent storage. The hauling of the waste water to disposal wells is expensive. Also, the waste water being injected underground has a tendency to leak.
In the State of Texas alone, the amount of waste water due to fracing that is being disposed of in disposal wells increased from 46 million barrels in 2005 to 3.5 billion barrels in 2011. On average, companies in Texas dispose of 290 million barrels of waste water each month. In the State of Texas alone, there are more than 8,000 active disposal wells, about 850 of which are large commercial operations.
One of the alternatives to disposing waste fluids in a disposal well is to evaporate the fluids to the extent possible so that less fluids will have to be put in a waste disposal well. At many drilling sites, surface collection ponds, or lined pits, may be used to collect the waste water. Some of the surface collection ponds use an evaporation process to reduce the amount of water in the waste water fluid. Systems that spray water into the atmosphere have been used in the past, but are generally very inefficient. Water cannons have been used to spray water into the atmosphere over waste water ponds or containment areas.